Anti-war news from Bay Area United Against War, an activist-oriented newsletter based in San Francisco, CA.

Friday, October 16, 2015

BAUAW NEWSLETTER, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2015

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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter

Table of Contents:

A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

B. ARTICLES IN FULL

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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS

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California Speaking Tour of David Sheen, Oct. 21-29, 2015

The Bullet, the Ballot, and the Boycott: Racism in Israel Today

Oct.
21-29, 2015, independent Canadian-Israeli journalist and filmmaker
David Sheen will present the Bullet, the Ballot & the Boycott at
venues in California. He will cover Israeli incitement to racist
violence, the focus of his on-the-ground reporting for the past five
years.

David will describe how top Israeli political and
religious leaders use dehumanizing discourse to inspire vigilante
attacks toward Palestinians, Africans and other non-Jews, especially
during the 2014 assault on the Gaza Strip. It will include material
that Sheen presented at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Brussels,
as well as new information never before been made public in English.

David's
speaking schedule is as follows. To make arrangements for David to
come to your event or to add the name of your organization as a tour
endorser, please call 510-236-4250 or write to us at
solidarity@ism-norcal.org.

Wed., Oct. 21
6:00pm
San Jose State University, details to follow
SJSU Students for Justice in Palestine
https://www.facebook.com/sjsusjp

View on www.ism-norcal.org
Tour organizer: ISM Support Group in Northern California

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International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity

AN EVENING OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE CUBAN PEOPLE

Featuring Kenia Serrano Puig, President of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP)

Friday November 13, 7:30pm

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts

339 11th Street, Richmond CA 94801-3105

Doors Open 6:30pm

$10-20 Donation at the Door

(nobody turned away for lack of funds)

Students and children free admission

This
will be a unique opportunity to hear from the Cuban perspective about
the new stage of U.S.-Cuba relations and the role that the U.S. Cuba
solidarity movement can play in ending the U.S. blockade.

ICAP
is a social organization founded on December 30, 1960 for the purpose
of promoting and explaining to the peoples of the world the relations of
solidarity that sparked the Cuban Revolution. ICAP is the vehicle to
reach around the globe to people who are in solidarity with Cuba. ICAP
is that interface that strengthens the network of solidarity, while
representing the Cuban people, and delivering a strong message that
solidarity not only benefits Cuba but the peoples of the world who are
aspiring to promote the idea that a better world is possible for all.

Initiated by the International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity

Urge
Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has
always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which he
was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting opinion
warning that the State of California "may be about to execute an
innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin
Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human
Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful conviction,
and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial misconduct and
racial discrimination which have marked the case. Amnesty International
opposes all executions, unconditionally.

"The
State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge
William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case

Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.

In
1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house
guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in
an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a
noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the venue
of his preliminary hearing.

Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

Following
his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this
politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."

Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.

Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.

In
2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime
that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the
state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin
Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.

Kevin
Cooper's case will be the subject of a new episode of CNN's "Death Row
Stories" airing on Sunday, July 26 at 7 p.m. PDT. The program will be
repeated at 10 p.m. PDT. The episode, created by executive producers
Robert Redford and Alex Gibney, will explore how Kevin Cooper was framed
by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and District
Attorney.Viewers on the east coast can see the program at 10 p.m. EDT
and it will be rebroadcast at 1 a.m. EDT on July 27. Viewers in the
Central Time zone can see it at 9 p.m. and midnight CDT. Viewers in the
Mountain Time zone can see it at 8 p.m. and ll p.m MDT. It will be aired
on CNN again during the following week and will also be able to be
viewed on CNN's "Death Row Stories" website.

Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up- from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
Kevin
Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and
sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in
Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter Jessica
and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year old son
Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

Convicted
in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin
Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin. He
has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence. In a
dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The
State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d
581.

There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:


The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the
murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a
hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could
a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four weapons,
and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were adults
(including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near their
bedsides?

 The sole surviving victim of the murders,
Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the murders
that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated this
statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr.
Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said "that's
not the man who did it."

 Josh Ryen's description of
the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were driving near the
Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported seeing three white
men in a station wagon matching the description of the Ryens' car
speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.


These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees
and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men
enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom were
covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.


The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman
who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's
department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left
blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also
reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a
tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She
also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one
recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in
the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister
saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could have
been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.

Lacking
a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution
claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a
minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But
the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the
driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The
prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and
credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder
scene.

The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days
before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had
been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to
convict.

The evidence the prosecution presented at
trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been
discredited… (Continue reading this document at:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)

This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015

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Free Albert Woodfox!

On
June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox
unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned
three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has
appealed.

Today, Albert is still behind
bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement.
He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert
King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their
activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party.
Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.

It is
time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice.
Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and
unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more

Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Amnesty for ALL those arresteddemanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore

"A riot is the language of the unheard" — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An
estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two
weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists, medics and legal observers.

One
individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now
facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's
$150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.

The
legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows
than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black
residents.

They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's
protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19
days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the
outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.

I
stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all
charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police
brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case
of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for
this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no
indictment.

It is an outrage that peaceful
protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists and legal observers.

Even the youth
who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given
an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and
justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the
windows of a police car.

The City of Baltimore should
work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than
criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions.
Drop the charges now!

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

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CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos

Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:

Americans
now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money
is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for
more than 40 million Americans and their families.

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.

Last
night Mumia got notice that the final appeal of his PA Department of
Corrections grievance was denied. Listen to his reaction here.

This denial comes on top of the magistrate Judge’s proposal to deny Mumia's right to treatment last week.

Remember--
one of the reasons the Judge gave was her claim that Mumia had not
"exhausted his administrative remedies" or received a final denial of
his request for care. Now he has received that denial.

We
know that withholding Mumia’s care is immoral and illegal. We are
confident that we will win this battle in court- but we can’t do it
alone.

We have 3 days left to raise $2,948 to support Mumia’s legal team in securing his right to hepatitis C treatment!

If
you have already joined us, we’re inviting you to ask one friend to
match your gift. We need about 50 more freedom fighters to join us to
reach our goal— and we want you to make that happen with us!

If you haven’t given yet- now is the time to make a contribution for Mumia. Will you join us?

Health care is a human right- for Mumia, and for all prisoners. Let's prove it.‪ #freemumia #fight4mumia

Reply
directly to this email to respond to the campaign owner, Prison Radio .
Visit the campaign page to view all comments and updates for this
project.

Help spread the word about the campaign!

PRISONRADIO.ORG

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Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
Updates from the New "Team Free Lorenzo Johnson":
Thank
you all for your relentless effort in the fight against wrongful
convictions and your determination to stand behind Lorenzo.

To
garner even more support for Lorenzo Johnson, we have been hard at work
updating the website and developing an even more formidable and
dedicated team. Please take a moment to visit the new site here.

During
the month of July, Lorenzo wrote two new articles for The Huffington
Post titled "When Prosecutors Deny Justice for the Innocent," and "Hurry
Up and Wait for Justice: The Struggle of Innocent Prisoners." In these
articles, Lorenzo discusses the flaws in the criminal justice system,
which he deems is a "serious problem in this country."

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

I
hope all is well with everyone and your families. As for myself, I'm
still on my journey in pursuit of my vindication. Sorry for my website
being shut down for a couple of weeks. It was being transferred to a new
provider and management. I'm back and will do my best to keep
everything up to speed with what's taking place.

I
would like to thank ALL of my loyal supporters in the U.S. and in the
MANY different counties that have signed on to support my innocence.
Thanks for all of the letters, emails, photos, etc. Like I always say, I
get energy to carry on and inspiration hearing form you, please stay
engaged in my struggle.

As of this moment, nothing has
changed, but – the continued delay tactics are constantly being used by
my prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos. With the
mounting of evidence that supports my innocence and police and
prosecution misconduct claims that is steadily piling up, you would
think that I would be having a couple of evidentiary hearings on my
actual innocence appeal that have been pending since August 5, 2013.

At
the time of this writing, I've been moved from SCI-Mahanoy to Dauphin
County Prison and locked down for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day. In the
20 minutes I get to come out, I get to take a shower and make a short
call. Prosecutor Stoycos had me moved so I can be a witness in his
attempt to have my codefendant Corey Walker's attorney removed from
representing him. How dare he call into question an attorney who is
seeking justice for her client, when prosecutor Stoycos himself violated
multiple constitutional rights of mine and Mr. Walker, that led to us
being in prison for 20 years and counting.

Prosecutor
Stoycos is continuously abusing his power and his endless resources he
has at his disposal. He is not tough on crime, he's tough on Innocent
Prisoners. Prosecutor Stoycos is doing everything in his power to
prevent justice from taking place. I encourage everyone to continue to
speak out against my nightmare, invite others to get involved by going
to my website and signing my Freedom Petition and whatever else they're
willing to do.

On a positive note, I just enrolled in
warehouse management trade and started on July 13th. Unfortunately,
you're only allowed to miss a couple of days and Prosecutor Stoycos had
me temporarily transferred on July 14th … It's extremely hard on Lifers
to get into these trades due to the fact that Lifers are placed at the
back of the list of ALL vocational classes. I try to further my
education every chance I get, so when I do come home, I will be
certified in different work.

The month of the hearing
has come and left, without me being brought to the courthouse … I'm one
of MANY innocent prisoners who endures this non-stop madness in our
pursuit of Justice and Freedom. Now that my webpage is almost caught up
to speed, I promise prompt updates and as everyone knows that contacted
me directly, I personally reply to those in the states and out of the
country. For those who can make a financial contribution, everything
counts. Take care and let's continue to fight until we achieve Freedom,
Justice, and Equality for all innocent prisoners.

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

[Note: Lorenzo has since been transferred back to SCI Mahanoy and can be reached at his usual address.]

Thank
you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit the
new website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!

On
December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading
African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an
all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly
altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton
Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge's approval,
repeatedly told the jury "you don't need evidence to convict Mr.
Pinkney." And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV.
PINKNEY TO THE 'ALTERED' PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led
away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney's appeal.

Checks
can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community
Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney. Mail
them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI
49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search "Pinkney").

I
am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting
in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike
Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in
prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make
an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...)
ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I
arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred
people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people
recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the
prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2
days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on
the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this
racist."

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan
political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist
injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly
changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor
Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial
evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the
purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County
activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization
(BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the
corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor,
Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an "Occupy the
PGA [Professional Golfers' Association of America]" demonstration
against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack
Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The
course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the
city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County
officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor
Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local
corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton
Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan
cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

The
Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent
charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist
white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black
city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian
ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper
column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do
this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning's clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.

Please
write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks' whistle-blower
former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning's release from
military prison.

It is important that each of these
authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley)
Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions
understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for
following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these
individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in
Manning's outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this
stage.

The
letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially
why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning's sentence is
reduced. The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be
unlikely to help.

A suggested message: "Chelsea Manning
has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the
course of being true to her conscience. I urge you to use your
authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning's sentence to time served." Beyond that
general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you
believe Chelsea deserves clemency.

Consider composing
your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself
(here are templates and some tips for doing that).

A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above

This
clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning's upcoming appeal
before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning's
new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the
prosecution's—and the trial judge's—misconduct during last year's trial
at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees at this critical stage!

Judge Wendell Griffen of Pulaski County Circuit Court on Friday halted
the executions of eight inmates, a blow to the state’s efforts to begin
putting prisoners to death for the first time in a decade. The first two
executions were set for Oct. 21. The judge also denied most of the
state’s request to dismiss the case. The inmates are challenging a new
law that allows Arkansas to withhold any information that could publicly
identify the manufacturers or sellers of its execution drugs.

Two
outside investigators looking into the death of Tamir Rice have
concluded that a Cleveland police officer, Tim Loehmann, acted
reasonably in deciding last year to shoot when he confronted the
12-year-old boy carrying what turned out to be a replica gun.

Those
opinions, reached separately by a Colorado prosecutor and a former
F.B.I. supervisory special agent, were released Saturday night by the
Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty, whose office will
ultimately present evidence in the case to a grand jury to decide on
possible criminal charges.

“The question is not whether every officer would have reacted the same way,” Kimberly A. Crawford, the retired F.B.I. agent, wrote in her report,
which noted that Officer Loehmann had no way of knowing Tamir’s gun was
fake. “Rather, the relevant inquiry is whether a reasonable officer,
confronting the exact same scenario under identical conditions could
have concluded that deadly force was necessary.”The reports, which were
commissioned by the prosecutor’s office, come almost 11 months after the shooting outside a recreation center
on Nov. 22, 2014. Footage of the shooting was captured on a
surveillance camera, and Tamir’s name quickly became among the most
prominent in a series of black men and boys whose deaths at the hands of
the police were memorialized in Twitter hashtags and protest chants.

Both
Ms. Crawford and S. Lamar Sims, the prosecutor from Colorado, said in
their reports that they were evaluating Officer Loehmann’s actions under
the United States Constitution, not Ohio state law.

“There can be no doubt that Rice’s death was tragic and, indeed, when one considers his age, heartbreaking,” Mr. Sims wrote.
But he added that “Officer Loehmann’s belief that Rice posed a threat
of serious physical harm or death was objectively reasonable as was his
response to that perceived threat.”

Tamir’s death resulted in a lengthy series of investigations that have frustrated some activists,
who see the shooting as a clear case of police overreach and have
called for the arrests of Officer Loehmann and his partner, Officer
Frank Garmback, who drove his police cruiser to within feet of Tamir but
who did not fire his weapon. Some have criticized Officer Garmback for
parking his cruiser so close.

“To suggest that Officer Garmback
should have stopped the car at another location is to engage in exactly
the kind of ‘Monday morning quarterbacking’ the case law exhorts us to
avoid,” Mr. Sims wrote.

Mr. McGinty said in a statement that his
office continued to investigate the case and had invited the Rice
family’s lawyers to submit their own expert reports.

“We are not
reaching any conclusions from these reports,” Mr. McGinty said. “The
gathering of evidence continues and the grand jury will evaluate it
all.”

Tamir’s age added to the outrage of many activists, though
the police on the scene said in interviews that they thought he was
several years older. In her report, Ms. Crawford said Tamir’s age was
not relevant in determining whether Officer Loehmann acted reasonably.

“When
he exited the police car, the officer was likely focused on Rice’s
hands as they moved to his waist and lifted his jacket, and not on
Rice’s age,” Ms. Crawford wrote. “Even if Officer Loehmann was aware of
Rice’s age, it would not have made his use of force unreasonable. A
12-year-old with a gun, unquestionably old enough to pull a trigger,
poses a threat equal to that of a full-grown adult in a similar
situation.”

Mr. Sims noted that the officers did not know Tamir’s
age. A dispatcher did not pass on the 911 caller’s statements that the
gun was “probably fake” and that the person holding it was “probably a
juvenile.”

Jonathan S. Abady, a Rice family lawyer, said in a
statement that “we now have grave concerns that there will be no
criminal prosecution.”

“Prosecutors exercise substantial
influence over the grand jury process and whether an indictment will
issue or not,” he said. “The video footage and other evidence readily
available from the outset made clear that this was a completely
unreasonable use of deadly force against Tamir.”

Mr. McGinty
provided no timeline of when a grand jury would decide on charges, but
said more reports had been commissioned by his office and would be
released as they were finished.

JERUSALEM — An Israeli retaliatory airstrike against a Hamas military target in Gaza resulted in the deaths of a pregnant Palestinian
woman and a toddler on Sunday, according to Palestinian officials. And a
Palestinian woman and a police officer were injured by a blast after
the woman tried to ignite a gas balloon in her car, according to Shin
Bet, Israel’s internal security service.

After
more than a week of bloodshed that spread from the West Bank and
Jerusalem to cities across Israel, the violence appeared to be shifting
gears and expanding, with Gaza increasingly drawn in.

The woman
and child killed at dawn Sunday appeared to be the first Palestinian
civilian casualties of an Israeli airstrike since a cease-fire ended 50
days of fierce fighting in Gaza in the summer of 2014. The Israeli
military said the strikes were in response to rocket fire from the Gaza
Strip overnight.Together with Israeli forces’ fatal shooting of a total
of nine Palestinians during violent protests along the Gaza border over
the weekend, the latest events added an increasingly volatile and
unpredictable dimension to the latest wave of violence, despite the
beginning of an international effort to calm the atmosphere.

The
mounting death toll in Gaza seemed to contradict the Israeli Army’s
stated goal of limiting civilian casualties in order to avoid further
inflaming the situation.

Amos Harel, the military affairs analyst
at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, described it as “a problematic
turning point,” writing on Sunday that the army needed to investigate
what had happened along the border and what orders the forces deployed
there had been given.

Later Sunday morning, shots were fired from
Gaza at an Israeli construction vehicle working with the army along the
border, but no injuries were reported, according to the military.

So
far this month, four Israelis have been killed in Palestinian gun and
knife attacks in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and several
more have been injured in about 10 copycat stabbings. Israeli forces
have fatally shot at least 20 Palestinians, many of them teenagers,
according to data compiled by the Palestinian health ministry and
Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group. Some of the Palestinians were
killed after carrying out attacks; others in clashes with Israeli
security forces in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and along the border
with Gaza. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been reported injured.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke by telephone with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas
of the Palestinian Authority over the weekend, and a delegation of
emissaries from the so-called quartet of Middle East peacemakers — the
United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union — were
expected to arrive in the region on Tuesday.

Mr. Netanyahu told
Mr. Kerry that Israel expected the Palestinian Authority to stop what he
called “its wild and mendacious incitement, which is causing the
current wave of terrorism,” according to a statement from Mr.
Netanyahu’s office.

Recently, Palestinian anger has focused on a
contested holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem revered by Jews as the
Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, where the Al Aqsa
Mosque and the Dome of the Rock now stand. Palestinian officials,
including Mr. Abbas, have accused Israel of plotting to divide the
sacred compound, despite Mr. Netanyahu’s repeated denials. Mr.
Netanyahu’s office said Mr. Kerry had clarified in the phone call that
“the United States is aware of the fact that it is Israel’s policy to
maintain the status quo and not change it.”

At the start of his
weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu blamed the Palestinian
Authority, Hamas and the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in
Israel for inciting the violence. After a weekend of stormy
demonstrations by Arab citizens of Israel, as well as
counterdemonstrations by right-wing Israeli Jews, Mr. Netanyahu said he
had approved a call-up of 16 reserve companies of border police officers
in order to restore security and order.

“It is preferable to
call up a massive force in advance to deal with possible developments
than to call them up after the event,” he said.

Hatem Abdul
Qader, an official in Mr. Abbas’s mainstream Fatah party in Jerusalem,
told the official Palestinian radio station, “Even if he summons NATO,
the issue is that we are resisting occupation.”

The Israeli
military said its warplanes had struck two Hamas weapons manufacturing
facilities in the Gaza Strip overnight in retaliation for rocket fire
against Israel. Al Resalah, a news site run by Hamas, the Islamic
militant group that dominates Gaza, said that at least two missiles had
struck a site of the group’s military wing.

Ashraf al-Qidra, a
spokesman for the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, the Palestinian
coastal enclave, said that the blast had caused a house to collapse,
killing a pregnant woman, Noor Hassan, 30, and a relative, Rahaf Hassan,
2, who was found under the rubble. According to other reports, the
child was Ms. Hassan’s daughter.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a
spokesman for the Israeli military, said the army was looking into the
reports of civilian deaths in Gaza. In an earlier statement, the
military said it held Hamas responsible for any acts of aggression from
Gaza. “This weekend, we have seen clear incitement encouraging the
breach of Israel’s sovereignty,” it added, pointing to violent
confrontations that it said threatened residents of southern Israel.

A
rocket fired from Gaza late Saturday was intercepted by Israel’s Iron
Dome antimissile defense system south of the Israeli coastal city of
Ashkelon, according to the military.

The rocket fire came after
the deadly protests along the Gaza border. On Saturday, two Palestinian
boys — Khalil Othman, 15, and Marwan Breikh, 13 — were fatally shot by
Israeli forces near Abassan, east of Khan Younis, according to Gaza
health officials, and a third Palestinian, Jihad Obeid, 22, died of
wounds sustained on Friday in similar protests. Hamas said that Mr.
Obeid had been a member of its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, and
praised him for taking “the path of jihad and resistance.”

The
Israeli military said it was trying to quell crowds that had hurled
rocks, rolled burning tires and tried to breach the fence separating
Gaza from Israel. In one case, dozens of Palestinians managed to enter
Israeli territory. Five were caught and detained for questioning, and
the rest retreated back to Gaza, according to the military.

The
circumstances of the blast in the car remained unclear. The police said
in a statement that an officer had pulled over a person driving in a
suspicious manner near the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, northeast
of Jerusalem, and that the driver had shouted “Allahu akbar” and set
off an explosion.

Micky Rosenfeld, a spokesman for the police, wrote on Twitter that police officers had prevented a “female terrorist from making her way to Jerusalem this morning.”

But
the independent Palestinian news agency Maan quoted an unnamed witness
as saying that an electrical problem had ignited a small fire inside the
woman’s car, and that she had panicked and started to scream.

The police identified the woman as a 31-year-old who lived in the West Bank city of Jericho and in East Jerusalem.

UNITED
NATIONS — A hushed room of diplomats listened intently as a man who
called himself Adnan described his escape from Mosul, Iraq, when the Islamic State laid siege to the city in 2014: As a gay man, he told them via videolink from Lebanon, he knew he would be killed, and that even members of his family would not be sorry.

Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations,
who organized the meeting, hailed his testimony as part of her
government’s efforts to raise the plight of gays and lesbians at the
Security Council. But even as she did so, Adnan’s hopes for a new life
in the United States came in for a rude awakening. Case workers vetting
his refugee claim told him that although he was an ideal candidate for
resettlement in the United States — a gay man at high risk of
persecution — he would have to wait for at least a year.The reason:
American immigration officials had stopped coming to Lebanon to
interview potential refugees from Iraq and Syria, because the United
States Embassy compound outside Beirut was being renovated, and they
considered no other location safe enough to house immigration officials
for the night.

The paradox did not escape him. “I am eligible to
speak at the Security Council and not eligible to travel to the U.S.A.,”
Adnan said in an interview in Lebanon a few weeks later. He uses a
pseudonym because he does not feel safe in Lebanon.

Adnan’s
predicament highlights the many bureaucratic hurdles and security
concerns that make refugee admissions to the United States so tortuously
slow, even as pressure mounts on the Obama administration to increase the number of refugees it accepts from the world’s widening war zones.

The Obama administration has promised a gradual increase
in the total refugees it resettles — from a current ceiling of 70,000
each year to 85,000 next year and 100,000 in 2017. That falls far short
of what refugee advocates are demanding, but American officials say even
the current goals will not be easy to pull off.

“It’s a
stretch,” said Anne C. Richard, the assistant secretary of state for
population, refugees and migration. “It’s going to take lot of effort, a
lot of cooperation.”

It is United States policy to accept the
most vulnerable of those fleeing war and persecution abroad — torture
victims, widows with children, and religious or sexual minorities, like
Adnan, who face heightened risks. But the White House is under intense
scrutiny to ensure that terrorists do not slip in with refugees, so the
process for vetting and admitting refugees takes up to two years,
requiring several rounds of background checks across a network of
intelligence agencies, plus a face-to-face interview to check if an
applicant has a valid refugee claim.

At least 18,000 Syrians and
55,000 Iraqis are in the pipeline, having been vetted by the United
Nations and now waiting to have their cases examined by the United
States — Adnan among them. About half are children.

They are part of what the United Nations calls a historic global displacement, with nearly 60 million people
forced to flee their homes because of war and persecution. Hundreds of
thousands, including Syrians and Iraqis, have poured into Europe in
recent months in the Continent’s worst refugee crisis in decades.
Germany alone has pledged to accept 800,000 refugees.

Ms.
Richard said she sympathized with calls to take more, but found those
unrealistic. “My heart is completely with them,” she said of refugee
advocates, adding that the Obama administration was looking at how to
streamline the process “and move it faster without cutting corners on
security.”

In Lebanon alone, there are more than a million refugees, mostly from Syria; by local law, they are unable to work, and most are slipping into poverty.

For
those waiting to come to the United States, the delays in Lebanon are
compounded by a Department of Homeland Security rule. Because of what a
department official vaguely described as “the security situation in
Lebanon,” visiting immigration officers can stay and work only inside
the United States Embassy compound, which is undergoing a major
face-lift. Those are the most stringent security restrictions in
Lebanon, where other Western governments allow their diplomats to live
in apartments in Beirut.

Because of the renovations, the last
time Homeland Security officers conducted interviews in Lebanon was in
September 2014, the official said.

“They will resume in the near future,” Ms. Richard said by phone from Washington, “but I don’t know exactly when.”

Among
those waiting is the family of Ara Agop Baljian, Armenian Christians
from Syria who fled Aleppo in September 2012 when their neighborhood
suddenly became a front line in the war between government and rebel
forces.

“Fighters and soldiers were all around our neighborhood,”
his wife, Karloine Aywabian, 31, said. “We had to leave because of the
risk of getting killed by a random gunshot or during one of the
exchanges of shelling.”

The couple, their three children and Mr.
Baljian’s mother found shelter in a Beirut neighborhood with other
Armenians. They were told they were ideal candidates for resettlement in
the United States: It was hard to imagine that, as members of a
religious minority, they could go home to Aleppo anytime soon, and they
had relatives in Southern California who were willing to help them
adjust.

Still, it took two years for American officials to
process their paperwork. The final hurdle remains the coveted
face-to-face interview. They have waited for one since December 2014. It
has grown harder and harder, the couple said, to make ends meet on the
under-the-table wages that Mr. Baljian earns as a jeweler’s assistant.

“A few days ago, a man called saying they will call soon,” he said in late September. “But nothing yet.”

The United Nations refugee agency in Lebanon
has stopped making resettlement referrals to the United States, because
it does not want people to wait indefinitely for an American official
to come to Beirut to conduct an interview.

Refugee advocates say
the delays also explain why some people risk their lives and pay
smugglers to help them sail to Europe. “Nothing happens with their case
for two years, and then they get on a boat,” said Becca Heller, director
of the International Refugee Assistance Project, which helped Adnan file his papers for resettlement in the United States.

“It’s hard to advise people against that,” Ms. Heller said.

So
far, fewer than 2,000 Syrians have been resettled in the United States.
By comparison, nearly 20,000 Iraqis have come to the United States over
the last year, in part because a special category of refugee slots has
been reserved for those who have worked with American government or aid
agencies in Iraq.

Adnan is a former medical student, and he
speaks perfect English. In Mosul, an Islamic State recruiter came for
him last year. He knew that Adnan was gay and told him that he could
either join the group’s ranks or die. Adnan refused.

Home was no
longer safe. His father did not know of his sexuality until the Islamic
State outed him, and was so incensed that he threatened to hand Adnan to
the group himself.

Adnan escaped to Lebanon in August 2014. He
waited eight months to receive a certificate from the United Nations
refugee agency qualifying him as a candidate for resettlement abroad. He
has not received any relief in months — funding cuts have forced the
United Nations to slash benefits in recent months — and he has been
working odd jobs, sometimes as a waiter, other times as a medical
assistant. He blogs about gay rights under the pseudonym Taim. He has
grown increasingly worried about his safety in the conservative
community where he is living and waiting.

“They are thinking
about us as numbers, cases, statistics,” he said. “Each one of us is an
individual with his own life, his own feelings. We lost everything, and
we are wasting days of waiting for the unknown. Wasting our youth.”

Somini
Sengupta reported from the United Nations, and Anne Barnard from
Beirut, Lebanon. Maher Samaan contributed reporting from Beirut.

WASHINGTON
— Saturday morning, with the crispness of fall in the air and wispy
clouds overhead, an impressive throng of black bodies — and a smattering
of other colored ones — gathered on the Mall, facing the steps of the
Capitol.

They had gathered for the “Justice or Else” rally
convened by the Nation of Islam’s controversial leader, Louis Farrakhan,
to mark the 20th anniversary of the group’s historic Million Man March.
And that’s the rub.

The question is, as it was in 1995: Can you
separate the march from the messenger, the lightning rod 82-year-old
Farrakhan? The answer: Not exactly.

The rally was in a way a
pageant for Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam — their power and prowess,
their ability to organize and attract allies, their beliefs and customs
— and it centered on Farrakhan as the celebrity father figure.

This
is not unlike 1995 when the march was conceived as a “day of
atonement,” focusing on personal responsibility, with black nationalist
overtones. As the writer Salim Muwakkil told The Times then:
“Historically, black people have always turned to black nationalism
during hostile racial times.”

Although the Million Man March was undoubtedly successful as a convening, criticism of Farrakhan was blistering.

A release by the American Jewish Congress called Farrakhan “one of the country’s most prominent and unrepentant public bigots.”

A New York Times editorial
at the time blasted Farrakhan and his fellow organizer Benjamin Chavis
Jr., comparing them to “white racists of the previous generation” and
saying “they want to prolong and exploit the nation’s racial divisions”
while promoting “the twisted Farrakhan ideology.”

Men in the
black gay community were conflicted about whether to come, both because
of homophobic statements made by supporters of the march and by Farrakhan himself,
who wrote in his 1993 book “A Torchlight for America,” “We must change
homosexual behavior and get rid of the circumstances that bring it
about.”

The exclusion of women was also debated. Adolph Reed, a
black professor of political science, who was then at Northwestern
University and is now at the University of Pennsylvania, said then, “The
message of Farrakhan’s march is fundamentally conservative and
blatantly sexist.”

This time, Farrakhan seemed acutely aware of
his critics, and seemed to want to pre-emptively address them. But even
his efforts to exalt women and include queer-identifying people while
continuing to honor and affirm men was framed in tones of patriarchy.

There
was the inordinate amount of time spent talking about women’s “wombs”
as a rationale for honor, the presentation of how women should dress to
“earn respect,” the mention that “a woman who’s beautiful and can’t cook
is a killer in the kitchen.”

Even as he said to L.G.B.T.Q.
people, “We are not your judges,” he framed queerness in the sinful
negative, invoking the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman to whom
Jesus said, “Go, and sin no more.”

Indeed, Farrakhan’s speech was
more sermon and proselytization than social justice call to action. He
didn’t spend much time on the enigmatic mantra “justice or else,” which
raises more questions than it answered.Justice for what? Anything and
everything, apparently.

The word justice has a broadness and
blankness that any pain can be projected onto it and reflected off it.
The event’s website says, “We want equal justice under the law,” but
under the heading “The Demand,” there is a list of groups for whom
justice is sought, but not the injustices themselves. The only
quasi-specific demands are “an immediate end to police brutality and mob
attacks” and “We want land.”

And then, “or else” what? The
answer seemed to vary with the broad coalition of speakers on Saturday,
but as for Farrakhan’s two-hour speech, there seemed to be a religious
allusion: Grant justice, America, or be subject to the divine judgment
of God.

But, during an interview on TV One, he had suggested “or
else” meant the withholding of economic participation by the aggrieved.

More
disturbingly, this summer, in what the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, The
Final Call, called a “trip South to promote the ‘Justice or Else!’
gathering,” Farrakhan said at a Florida church: “If the federal
government will not intercede in our affairs, then we must rise up and
kill those who kill us, stalk them and let them feel the pain of death
that we are feeling.”

Farrakhan and rally organizers took pains
to include overtures to Black Lives Matter, the predominant black
movement of this moment. Some people from the movement even spoke at the
rally. Many attendees were no doubt spurred by the events elevated by
the movement. But this is an alliance of which that movement should be
wary, specifically at a time that many conservatives are trying to paint
it as a hate group.

In 1995, Ronald Walters, a political science professor, told The Times,
“For most blacks, this is about pain.” He continued, “The discussion of
Farrakhan is a side issue for us.” Maybe that sensibility still stands.

HOUSTON
— For 15 minutes, a man shot by an off-duty officer here lay bleeding
from two gunshots in his abdomen as the responding officers stood by
without providing first aid. At one point, as the victim, a 53-year-old
black man, raised his head, an officer used his foot to keep the man’s
face on the pavement, according to a dashboard camera video supplied to
The New York Times recently by the man’s relatives.

From the time
the episode was first reported, at 2:17 a.m. on July 9, 2014, and
including the time the man, Charles K. Goodridge, lay unaided on the
ground, it took more than an hour for him to arrive at an emergency
room. An hour after his arrival at the hospital in an ambulance, he was
dead.

The length of time Mr. Goodridge was left unassisted has
angered his relatives and has been criticized by two witnesses to the
episode and by law enforcement officials. And like the deaths of Eric Garner on Staten Island, Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Walter L. Scott
in North Charleston, S.C., the Goodridge case has raised racially
charged questions, not only about what led to the shooting but the
actions of the police officers in the aftermath.

“He was shot
twice, bleeding, and nobody did anything,” said Mr. Goodridge’s mother,
Lucille, 75. “I don’t think that if he was white they would have just
left him like that. A dog would have gotten more attention than he did.”

It
is unclear if Mr. Goodridge, a former computer programmer, would have
survived if the officers had rendered aid before the paramedics arrived.
But experts on police procedure and law enforcement officials who
examined the video said the off-duty officer and his colleagues should
have done more to assist Mr. Goodridge.

He was shot by an
off-duty Harris County deputy constable after getting into a
confrontation with the officer at an apartment complex northwest of
Houston. The video shows Mr. Goodridge sprawled in a parking lot before
an ambulance arrives, as officers put up crime scene tape and put him in
handcuffs. They talk to him and walk by him, but at other times they
leave him alone, bleeding, and are not in view of the camera.

“They
didn’t care that the suspect needed attention,” said Timothy T.
Williams Jr., a retired Los Angeles detective and an expert on police
practices. “There was a callousness as it relates to his injuries. It
was almost like, ‘We’ll get to you when we get to you.’ ”

The
treatment of Mr. Goodridge illustrates complicated issues of policing,
compassion and medical care on which there is little consensus on proper
police procedure.

Some police agencies require officers who use
force to perform first aid to injured suspects. For instance, the Police
Department in Greenville, N.C., has a policy stating that “the involved
officer will render first aid to the individual until the arrival of
E.M.S. unit.” But many departments do not explicitly require first aid,
and officers follow more general protocols by simply ensuring paramedics
arrive.

The Houston officers seen in the video work for the
Precinct 4 constable’s office. Its top official, Constable Mark Herman,
did not respond to requests for comment. At the time of the shooting,
the department was led by Ron Hickman, who has since been appointed the
Harris County sheriff. A spokesman for Sheriff Hickman referred
questions to Constable Herman.

In Texas, constables and their
deputies are state-licensed officers who perform duties similar to those
of police officers, but who also serve eviction notices. It was unclear
if the actions of the officers were being investigated by prosecutors. A
spokesman for the Harris County district attorney, Jeff McShan, said
the office does not disclose “what we are or are not investigating.”

A
spokesman for the ambulance service, Cypress Creek E.M.S., declined to
comment. Its response time of 10 minutes did not exceed the median
response time for Harris County, which is 12 minutes. However, the
overall delay of more than an hour in getting Mr. Goodridge to the
hospital was called excessive by experts. Several factors contributed to
the length of time, including a 30-mile trip to Ben Taub Hospital in
Houston. In addition, dispatchers in the constable’s office initially
contacted an ambulance service that did not serve that area. and then
sent Cypress Creek E.M.S. to the wrong address, according to audio
recordings of dispatch communications.

The officers appeared to
be unaware of the problems getting an ambulance to the scene and put the
responsibility of tending to Mr. Goodridge’s injuries on the
paramedics, according to the dispatch communications. During the wait
for the ambulance, the two officers seen most prominently in the video —
Sgt. John M. Walton, who is white, and Deputy Constable Andres Rosas,
who is Hispanic — asked dispatchers if paramedics were on their way and
urged them to get E.M.S. there. Sergeant Walton, whose patrol car
supplied the video, was asked if deputies needed additional assistance,
but he told dispatchers that they did not.

“All we need to do is get this guy on an ambulance,” he added in the audio recordings.

Dr.
Michael M. Baden, a forensic pathologist and the former chief medical
examiner for New York City, reviewed the autopsy report and said that
Mr. Goodridge could have survived if he had arrived at the hospital
sooner.“They watched while he was bleeding to death, and that bleeding
could have been stopped because it didn’t hit any major organs,” he
said. “The fact that they didn’t do any CPR in this instance probably
didn’t matter much. The thing that had to be done in this case is stop
the internal bleeding, and you can’t do that from the outside. You’ve
got to do it in the operating room.”

A Harris County grand jury
in June declined to indict Deputy Constable Francisco J. Ruiz, the
officer who shot Mr. Goodridge. The shooting unfolded at the Village in
the Woods, an apartment complex in Cypress. Mr. Goodridge had moved to
Houston from the Boston area and had struggled after suing his employer,
Hewlett-Packard, in 2007 and 2008 for racial discrimination and
nonpayment of overtime, according to court documents. The case was
settled in 2009, but he lost his job as part of the settlement and lost
touch with relatives.

He was evicted from his apartment at the
Village in the Woods, but continued to return to the complex and had
been given a trespass warning, the authorities said. Deputy Ruiz also
lived there and worked while off duty as a security guard at the
complex. That morning, Deputy Ruiz was patrolling the complex at about 2
a.m. and spotted Mr. Goodridge in the fitness center.

Deputy
Ruiz, who is Hispanic, told prosecutors that he went to get his gun and
his badge and entered the fitness center to tell Mr. Goodridge that he
was not supposed to be on the property. He tried to handcuff Mr.
Goodridge, but Mr. Goodridge pulled away, and Deputy Ruiz followed him
to the parking lot, where Mr. Goodridge attacked him, according to the
deputy’s version of events.

The deputy “became fearful that
Goodridge was going to take his gun and kill him with it, so when he
gained some distance from Goodridge, Ruiz pulled the gun and shot
Goodridge twice,” Mr. McShan said, summarizing what the officer told
prosecutors.

Mr. Goodridge’s brother, Gary, is skeptical of that
description. “He had never been in a fight,” he said of his brother.
“To think that for the first time in his life he’s going to go after
someone who’s a policeman and has a gun is absolutely unbelievable.”

As
Mr. Goodridge lay in the parking lot, two people who lived in the
complex said they heard the officers tell him to “stop talking” and
“stop moving.” One of the witnesses, a woman who did not want her name
used out of fear of retribution from the authorities, said she could
hear Mr. Goodridge moaning.

“There was no sense of urgency,” she
said. “It was not only just a long period of time. There were long times
in between anybody even acknowledging he was on the ground.”

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

7) Two Reviews of Tamir Rice Shooting in Cleveland Are Seen as Shielding Police

For almost a year, activists in Cleveland have pushed for the arrest of Officer Tim Loehmann, the rookie patrolman who fatally shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice near a recreation center in November.

Protesters
have marched through Cleveland, shared their outrage on Twitter and
even used a little-known section of Ohio law to directly ask a judge to
issue arrest warrants. But Officer Loehmann has remained free, and a pair of outside reports
released Saturday concluded that he was “reasonable” in deciding to
shoot Tamir, who was carrying a replica gun that looked much like the
real thing.

Though the investigation will continue, and a grand
jury will ultimately decide on charges, some believe that those reports,
which were commissioned and released by the prosecutor’s office in
Cuyahoga County, signal that an indictment is unlikely.“It will be read,
understandably, as a tragic foreshadowing of where the case may be
headed: no arrest, no charges, no indictments,” said Rhonda Y. Williams, the director of the Social Justice Institute at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Dr. Williams was among several activists who, using an obscure Ohio statute, have signed affidavits seeking the arrests
of Officer Loehmann and his partner, Officer Frank Garmback. Officer
Garmback drove their patrol car within feet of Tamir but did not fire
his gun. Though a judge found probable cause on some possible charges,
no arrest warrants have been issued.

The reports released
Saturday night — one written by a retired supervisory special agent with
the F.B.I., the other by a Colorado prosecutor — examined the
shooting’s legality under the United States Constitution, not Ohio law.
But each reviewer found that Officer Loehmann had been placed in a
volatile situation with minimal information and had acted reasonably in
shooting Tamir. Though a 911 caller who saw Tamir near the recreation
center had cautioned that he was “probably a juvenile” and that the gun
was “probably fake,” the officers were not told that information.

David
Blake, a retired California police officer who serves as an expert
witness on use of force by the police, said the reports appeared “sound”
when he looked them over. Mr. Blake said the decision to pull the
cruiser so close to Tamir and the dispatcher’s failure to relay some of
the caller’s caveats were worthy of further review and were potentially
relevant in civil court, but should have no effect on the evaluation of
whether Officer Loehmann was criminally culpable for shooting.

“I
don’t think the criminal application of those precursors are relevant,”
Mr. Blake said, “because Loehmann, he was put in that position. That’s
who is going to be looked at as the person involved in the incident.
That’s who the reasonableness standard is going to be placed on.”

But Craig B. Futterman,
a clinical professor of law at the University of Chicago, criticized
the reports’ “laser focus” on the shooting itself and said the reviewers
should have placed more weight on the events leading up to the shots.

“There’s
strong evidence to believe, in the aggregate, the actions were
unreasonable,” said Professor Futterman, who founded the Civil Rights
and Police Accountability Project at the university.

Professor
Futterman said it was a “tough call” whether Officer Loehmann had been
unreasonable as an individual in deciding to shoot. The professor also
said he wished the widely circulated surveillance footage of the
shooting included audio so he could hear what, if anything, the officer
said before firing.

Since Tamir was shot on Nov. 22, his name has
been chanted at protests across the country that called attention to
the deaths of black people at the hands of the police. Many activists
see Tamir’s shooting as a clear case of police overreach: a black boy,
not even a teenager, playing in a park who was fatally shot within
seconds of the officers’ arrival.

In Cleveland — where the police
department now operates under a consent decree with the Justice
Department and where an officer was acquitted this year of manslaughter
charges in another on-duty shooting — there has been growing frustration
with the lengthy investigation of Tamir’s death. Lawyers for the Rice
family have criticized the most recent reports and questioned the
motives of the county prosecutor, Timothy J. McGinty.

“These
hired guns — all pro-police — dodge the simple fact that the officers
rushed Tamir and shot him immediately without assessing the situation in
the least,” Subodh Chandra, one of the family’s lawyers, said in an
emailed statement. “Reasonable jurors in a criminal trial could find
that conduct unreasonable. But they will never get the chance, because
the prosecutor is working diligently to ensure that there is no
indictment and no accountability.”

Jonathan S. Abady, another
lawyer for the Rice family, dismissed the findings of the two reports as
"totally speculative" and said in a statement that it would be "highly
suspicious" if prosecutors submitted the findings to grand jurors.

Mr.
McGinty said that the decision to release the reports was part of an
effort to be transparent about a difficult case and that his office was
“not reaching any conclusions” based on those two opinions. The Rice
family has also been offered the chance to provide information to grand
jurors, he said.

Officer Loehmann and Officer Garmback have not
spoken to investigators about their conduct. Mr. McGinty criticized the
police union for encouraging that choice, saying the silence made it
“more challenging to find answers” and was “needlessly delaying the
process of justice.” Stephen Loomis, the president of the Cleveland
Police Patrolmen’s Association, the union for rank-and-file officers,
did not respond to messages seeking comment.

As the first
anniversary of Tamir’s death approaches, there is no indication of when a
grand jury will decide whether to issue charges. Mr. McGinty said his
office had commissioned more reports, which will be released after they
are finished.

Rachelle Smith, 34, a Cleveland resident who signed
the affidavits seeking the officers’ arrests, questioned some of the
findings in the expert reports. Ms. Smith said she had “no confidence”
that there would be an indictment but was “cautiously holding hope.”

“I
think that a failure to indict or a failure to convict would just be
another blow to a city and a community that is beat down,” Ms. Smith
said. “An indictment would provide hope for justice. It might signal a
shift towards transforming the criminal justice system. Either way, it’s
just a step.”

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8) Income Inequality Grows With Age and Shapes Later Years
By Paula Span

Susan
McNeely left college after a year to marry and have children. She
worked all her life — as a waitress, school bus driver, commercial
fisherwoman, bank teller, property manager — but “it was a struggle,
hand-to-mouth all the time,” she said.

Now 67, divorced and
living in Proctorsville, Vt., she burned through her savings when the
recession doomed a bar and restaurant she had opened nearby. Emphysema has left her reliant on supplemental oxygen around the clock.

A small Social Security
check, state heating assistance and $183 a month in food stamps
represent her only income. Life might be easier if Mrs. McNeely moved to
Connecticut, near her daughter, but she can’t afford rents there.
Still, with help from friends, she gardens, joins book groups and
patronizes $5 movies. Decades of living on a low income have probably
helped, she said, because “I know how to stretch a dollar.”Carol Rosen
also grew up in a frugal household, but earned a college degree, married
a surgeon, and worked as a designer of museum exhibitions and as a
volunteer. She inherited money from her mother and later from her
husband, who died two years ago. Now 81 and recovering from that loss,
she lives in affluent Mountain Lakes, N.J.; walks 45 minutes a day;
enjoys concerts in New York City; and plans vacations that involve
hiking and camping.

Mrs. Rosen recognizes that she has been
fortunate. “I can go out to dinner and maintain my Philharmonic tickets
and go to Belize,” where she canoed and stayed (alone) in a thatched hut
last winter. Her mother and other relatives lived into their 90s, and
Mrs. Rosen, who has survived breast cancer, hopes she can, too, “because there’s still a lot I’d like to do.”

Old
people contend with lots of common ordeals: struggles with health and
mobility, thinning social networks, dismissal by a youth-besotted
culture.

“But people face these challenges on an uneven playing field,” said Corey Abramson,
a sociologist at the University of Arizona. “The inequality that shapes
our lives from birth onward doesn’t end with the first Social Security
check.”

Ronald Lee,
a demographer at the University of California, Berkeley, and a
co-chairman of the committee that studied the gap, told me he was
staggered by its findings.

Dividing the population into lifetime
earning levels, the committee found that men born in 1930 who reached
age 50 had a life expectancy of another 26.6 years if they were in the
lowest income bracket and 31.7 years in the highest bracket. But
projections for men born in 1960 showed no improvement for the lowest
earners — and an additional seven years for the highest. In three
decades, the life expectancy gap had widened from about five years to
more than 12 — “shockingly large,” Dr. Lee said.

The longevity gains we’ve all heard (and written) so much about, in other words, are going to the men atop the economic ladder.

And,
even more strikingly, to the women at the top. Lower-earning women
actually have declining life expectancies in simulations that compared
the 1960 cohort with those born in 1930. “That’s largely explained by
differences in starting and quitting smoking,” Dr. Lee said. But those
in the top earnings bracket who reach 50 can now expect, on average,
another 41.9 years. The gap by income has surged from four years to more
than 13.

Those widening gaps mean that the rich get richer when it comes to federal benefits — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
In the 1930 birth cohort, lifetime benefits for low- and high-earning
men were about the same. Among those born in 1960, however, men in the
highest earning bracket will receive $132,000 more on average than those
in the lowest; the highest-earning women will receive $28,000 more.

In
an ethnographic study conducted over several years, Dr. Abramson saw
how inequality played out in daily life as he visited senior centers,
senior housing and nursing homes
in middle-class and poor neighborhoods in the Bay Area in California,
observing and interviewing (and occasionally driving someone to a
doctor’s appointment). “It structures people’s lives in profound ways,”
he said.

Middle-class neighborhoods, for instance, had more
transportation options, more and better-funded volunteer and social
service organizations, more markets within walking distance, better
hospitals.Subsidized senior housing in those areas resembled upscale
condominiums. In poor neighborhoods, “it looked much like the stereotype
of housing projects,” Dr. Abramson said. “The physical environment,
everything from sidewalks to housing, tended to be more poorly
maintained.” Higher crime rates made aging adults fearful about
venturing out.

Health care varies, too. The fact that virtually
all older Americans rely on Medicare or Medicaid, or both, hardly erases
the cumulative effects of a lifetime of unequal access.

Carol Rosen has never lacked health insurance,
for example, and buys supplemental insurance to cover much of what
Medicare doesn’t. Susan McNeely can’t afford the premiums for a Medigap
policy. After spending a week in the hospital with an emphysema
exacerbation last spring, she’s still “sporadically” paying noncovered
medical bills. She skimps on dental care, too, because Medicare doesn’t cover it.

Inequality
affects even the benefits of social networks. “I’ve lost quite a few
people who were very important to me, and those that are left spend a
lot of time in Florida,” Mrs. Rosen said. She’s looking forward to
volunteering for Democratic candidates next year, a source of not only
psychic rewards but social connections.

Almost every older person
attends too many funerals. But Mrs. McNeely relies on good friends and
neighbors for many kinds of direct assistance: snow shoveling, pharmacy
runs, care when she’s sick. “I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without
them,” she said. People with more money miss lost friends, but they can
also hire help.

Such inequality in life spans,
in physical environments, in health care and in public benefits means
that policy makers and legislators, who are often enthusiastic about
cutting “entitlement programs,” should proceed cautiously, the National
Academy committee chairmen warned.

Their report analyzed several
proposed reforms, including raising the age at which people can draw on
Social Security, reducing cost-of-living increases and increasing the
eligibility age for Medicare. Some tactics would only slightly narrow
the gap between high and low earners; others would actually worsen
inequality.

“Any policy argument based on an average is going to
be misleading; it ignores that the average masks very different
trends,” Dr. Orszag said.

Inequality at older ages, moreover,
offers a powerful case for cross-generational responses. Generational
conflict — older voters opposing school bonds, younger workers chafing
at Social Security taxes — has never made much sense, given that the
young, if they’re lucky, eventually become the old.

“If we fail
to invest at younger ages, the impact can show up at older ages,” Dr.
Orszag said, arguing for an all-in-it-together approach. “There are lots
of opportunities for expanding access to health care and education for
younger people, and that has lifelong effects.”

LONDON — Citing the strain on resources, the London police said on Monday that they were ending their round-the-clock monitoring of the Ecuadorean Embassy here, where Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has been holed up since June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden.

In
a diplomatic and legal battle of wills, Mr. Assange, who faces an
accusation of rape in Sweden and an order that he be extradited there to
face questioning, sought asylum at the embassy. He has refused to go to
Sweden, saying that he fears he could then be extradited to the United
States to face prosecution related to the publication of leaked State
Department diplomatic cables. Mr. Assange, a native of Australia, has
strenuously denied the rape allegations, originally made in 2010, and no formal charges have been filed against him.

The
police have been keeping a 24-hour watch outside the embassy, in the
exclusive Knightsbridge district, poised to arrest Mr. Assange if he
tried to leave. (Diplomatic protocol prevents them from entering the
building.)

The constant surveillance had, as of the end of April,
cost British taxpayers 11.1 million pounds, or $17 million, according
to the police. It has also prompted an outcry by local politicians, who
have called the operation a misuse of public resources, even as
government officials have said that Britain has a legal duty to enforce
the extradition request by the Swedish authorities.

The
Metropolitan Police Service in London, also known as Scotland Yard, said
on Monday that while it remained committed to executing the arrest
warrant, “it is no longer proportionate to commit officers to a
permanent presence.”

The police said the decision “has not been
taken lightly.” It was made, they said, only after consultation with the
Home Office, which is responsible for Britain’s internal security, and
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

“A significant amount of time has passed since Julian Assange
entered the embassy, and despite the efforts of many people there is no
imminent prospect of a diplomatic or legal resolution to this issue,”
the police service said.

“The M.P.S. has to balance the interests
of justice in this case with the ongoing risks to the safety of
Londoners and all those we protect, investigating crime and arresting
offenders wanted for serious offenses, in deciding what a proportionate
response is.”

The British news media has reported
that the Ecuadorean Embassy has considered different plots to help Mr.
Assange escape, including smuggling him out in a disguise, having him
leap across rooftops to get to a nearby helipad, or having him escape
and then camouflage himself among the throngs of shoppers at the nearby
Harrods department store.

Citing documents leaked from the
embassy, news reports have also suggested that he could be whisked into a
car or be smuggled out of the embassy in a bag. Another idea apparently
circulating was that he would be appointed as Ecuador’s official
representative to the United Nations, under the assumption that he could
travel to Ecuador by invoking diplomatic immunity.

In October,
Swedish prosecutors dropped several cases against Mr. Assange of lesser
sexual misconduct, saying that the time allowed under Swedish law to
pursue the cases had expired. Under Swedish law, the rape allegation can
be pursued until August 2020.

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10) Confrontation With Black Partygoers Leads to Gang Charges for White Group

DOUGLASVILLE,
Ga. — In an unusual legal maneuver, the district attorney in this
suburb of Atlanta said Monday that he had won indictments against 15
supporters of the Confederate battle flag, accusing them of violating
the state’s anti-street-gang statute during a confrontation with black
partygoers in July.

Prosecutors say that members of the group,
which calls itself Respect the Flag, threatened a group of blacks
attending an outdoor birthday party on July 25. A cellphone video of
part of the episode shows several white men driving away from the party
in a convoy of pickup trucks with the Confederate battle flag and other
banners, including American flags, fluttering from the truck beds.

The
partygoers contend that members of the flag group yelled racial slurs
and displayed a crowbar, a knife and either a rifle or a shotgun,
according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group in
Montgomery, Ala., that is representing some of the accusers.The Douglas
County district attorney, Brian Fortner, a white Republican elected to
the office in 2014, announced the indictments in a news conference
Monday morning. Each of the 15 was indicted on one count of making
terroristic threats and a second count of unlawfully participating in
“criminal gang activity.”

Mr. Fortner, whose county has
transformed from predominantly white to decidedly mixed over the past
two decades, said that the Georgia statute upon which the second charge
is based, the Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act, was “worded very
broadly to deal with any type of activity that occurs with a group
that’s organized that commits a crime.”

None of the accused had
been arraigned as of Monday, and it was not clear if they had lawyers
representing them. By Monday afternoon, none of them had applied for
representation with the county public defenders’ office. But a member of
the group told a local newspaper that the black partygoers started the
confrontation.

Several criminal lawyers and legal scholars said
Monday that they could not recall other instances in which a state
anti-gang statute had been used to prosecute a Confederate heritage
group in the Deep South. The first version of Georgia’s anti-gang law
was passed in 1992 at the behest of Atlanta’s police chief at the time,
Eldrin Bell.

The state’s General Assembly, in the law’s statement
of intent, noted that citizens retained their rights to freedom of
expression and association. But it also declared that Georgia was in a
“state of crisis which has been caused by violent criminal street gangs
whose members threaten, terrorize and commit a multitude of crimes
against the peaceful citizens of their neighborhoods.”

Pickup
trucks flying Confederate-themed flags have become a regular sight in
many parts of the South since June, when a white gunman, apparently
influenced by racist doctrine, massacred nine black worshipers at a Charleston, S.C., church. A subsequent effort by some elected officials in the region to remove Confederate symbols
from public spaces has provoked a strong negative reaction from some
white Southerners, who argue that the symbols are a part of their
history and heritage.

The indictments were handed up Friday by a
grand jury in Douglas County, a fast-growing county a few miles west of
Atlanta that is about 52 percent white and 44 percent black. Suburban
sprawl and the steady migration of blacks out of the city’s core have
caused striking social and demographic change here: In 1990, blacks made
up only about 8 percent of the population, according to census figures.

The
anti-gang law defines a “criminal street gang” as “any organization,
association or group of three or more persons associated in fact,
whether formal or informal,” that engages in or conspires to commit a
defined set of serious criminal acts. The law gives prosecutors numerous
ways to define the existence of a gang, including sharing signs,
symbols, tattoos, graffiti or “common activities.”

Critics
challenged the law on First Amendment grounds, but it was upheld by the
Georgia Supreme Court in 2009. Ronald L. Carlson, a law professor at the
University of Georgia, said that Georgia’s law was generally “in line”
with other state anti-gang statutes around the country.

But Mr.
Carlson also said that he expected lawyers for the defendants to file
pretrial motions to dismiss the counts and argue that the identification
of their clients as gang members was a stretch.

LeeAnne Lynch, a
public defender in DeKalb County, Ga., who was among the lawyers who
unsuccessfully challenged the law’s constitutionality, said Monday that
she continued to believe that the law was overly broad. She said small
groups of people could be defined as a gang just because they were
“wearing certain types of clothes or have a group motto that they
share.”

Ms. Lynch said that the law had been used to prosecute
members of rap groups who have some affiliation with criminal gangs, but
are not gang members themselves. Prosecutors, she said, often use the
statute to “load up” charges on defendants to pressure them to agree to a
plea deal.

Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law
Center and its chief trial lawyer, could not recall seeing an anti-gang
statute used against this kind of group in the past. But he said it was
“a very good use” of the statute. “I don’t know why it hasn’t been used
before,” he said.

Mr. Fortner said that some of the men involved in the episode had been arrested, and others would be arrested soon. In a July 27 article
in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a member of the group who was
named in the indictments, Levi Bush, said that the partygoers yelled at
some members of his group as they drove by. Partygoers then threw rocks
at his truck, he said.

Mr. Bush, in a brief phone interview on
Monday, denied that he had broken the law. “I speak for me and everybody
else — we are not guilty in these charges,” he said. He declined to
elaborate.

Two members of the group, Joe Eric Hood and Thomas
Summers, were each also indicted on an unrelated count of battery
stemming from an episode at a gas station called the Corn Crib. Mr.
Fortner said the accuser was white, but declined to comment further.

The
party occurred on a Saturday at the home of Melissa Alford, 44. On
Monday, Ms. Alford showed the side street where, she said, the trucks
had pulled over and begun to harass her guests. She said she saw one of
them with a rifle or shotgun, and heard one racial epithet used. She
said that none of her guests threw rocks.

Ms. Alford said that
she worked with at-risk youth as part of a nonprofit she founded. Some
of them, she said, have been identified by the authorities as gang
members. She said the men in the trucks deserved the same treatment.

“Just like the Crips,” she said, “if they’re out there doing some foolishness like this, they’re going to get charged.”

But
the Education Department, despite a crackdown against what it calls
“bad actors,” continues to hand over tens of millions of dollars every
month to other for-profit schools
that have been accused of predatory behavior, substandard practices or
illegal activity by its own officials or state attorneys general across
the country.Consider the Education Management Corporation, which runs
110 schools in the United States for chefs, artists and other trades. It
has been investigated or sued in recent years by prosecutors in at
least 12 states. The Justice Department has accused the company of
illegally using incentives to pay its recruiters. And last year,
investors filed a class-action lawsuit, contending that the company
engaged in deceptive enrollment practices and manipulated federal student loan and grant programs.

Education Management nonetheless received more than $1.25 billion in federal money over the last school year.

The
career training and for-profit college industry has been accused in
recent years of preying on the poor, veterans and minorities by charging
exorbitant fees for degrees that mostly fail to deliver promised skills
and jobs.

Despite stepped-up scrutiny, hundreds of schools that
have failed regulatory standards or been accused of violating legal
statutes are still hauling in billions of dollars of government funds.
They include tiny beauty schools with staggering loan default rates and
online law schools with dismal graduation records and no bar association
accreditation. Without government funds, which account for the
overwhelming bulk of revenue, few of these institutions could attract
students or stay in business.

The continuing flow of money
illustrates the quandary facing federal education officials. On one
hand, they have moved forcefully to try to protect taxpayer funds and
prevent students from falling deeply into debt without anything to show
for it. On the other, they must avoid running roughshod over private
for-profit schools that have not been found guilty of wrongdoing. Agency
officials point out that they cannot withhold money based on
accusations, but must have proof of misconduct.

For example,
Education Management, which says it is cooperating with prosecutors,
says it “strongly disagrees” with the Justice Department allegations.

Regulators
are caught between an industry that says it is being unfairly demonized
by opponents and critics who complain not enough is being done to
prevent fraud and abuse of vulnerable students.

A Quandary

“For-profits
successfully serve a lot of students, and the department has been very
sensitive to having all students suffer for what may only affect some
students in some programs,” said Kevin Kinser, an associate professor
who studies for-profit colleges at the State University of New York at
Albany. “So they are reluctant to throw the baby out with the bath
water.”

Mr. Kinser pointed out that the Education Department had little flexibility under the law when it came to cutting off federal student loan
and grant money to potential abusers. “There are individual triggers in
place for financial viability, institutional integrity, et cetera,” he
said, “but no three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule.”

Education
officials say they have clamped down on many for-profit schools,
restricting their ability to expand their programs or the number of
campuses, capping the number of students eligible for student loans, or
requiring schools like Education Management to post a letter of credit
to gain access to federal student loans and grants. The letter is meant
to protect students and taxpayers if the company is unable to cover
federal student-aid liabilities.

“What’s clear to all of us is
that the best way to solve this problem is at the front end and not to
let bad schools operate,” said Ted Mitchell, the under secretary of
education. The agency’s “more aggressive stance,” he said, helped
contribute to an 18 percent drop in enrollment at for-profits from 2011
to 2013.

Still, critics say that even schools with egregious
violations have become adept at exploiting loopholes, sidestepping rules
or taking advantage of yearslong appeals processes. Companies with
several campuses can pool graduation, financial, enrollment, staffing
and other statistics to mask weak performers, experts say.

“Bright-line
standards are good, but they can also be managed,” said Ben Miller,
senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American
Progress, a liberal research and advocacy group. “It’s why almost nobody
gets caught. The big schools know how to work the numbers to avoid
failing.”

For example, the government can withhold student loan
payments when a college’s default rate surpasses 30 percent three years
in row — a signal that a school has a high dropout rate or that its
students are not making sufficient income to pay back their loans. But
several schools have figured out how to lower their rates by getting
students temporary deferments or forbearances so they fall outside the
three-year window.

Nearly 100 schools have a student loan default
rate that exceeds 30 percent. Last year, they received $116 million in
federal aid from the Education Department.

A new study by Adam
Looney, of the Treasury Department, and Constantine Yannelis at Stanford
University, found that since 2000, “most of the increase in default is
associated with the rise in the number of borrowers at for-profit
schools.” For-profit schools enroll about 12 percent of the nation’s
college students, yet they account for nearly half of student loan
defaults.

Finding Problems

ITT Educational Services,
which has about 138 campuses and 47,000 students, has been investigated
or sued by 19 states, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Justice Department. Two of
its campuses also failed to meet the Education Department’s standards
for financial responsibility.

Nonetheless, campuses flagged for
problems by the department received more than $592 million in the
12-month period that ended June 30.

In an email, Nicole Elam, a
spokeswoman for ITT, wrote: “To date, not a single lawsuit has been
filed by the multistate group of attorneys general naming ITT Tech.” In
addition, ITT has called the S.E.C.’s charges “unfounded” and the
consumer protection bureau’s case “unjustified.”

“ITT Tech does
help prospective students make informed decisions about enrollment
through the disclosure of program cost, graduation and job placement
rates, graduate salaries and loan debt,” Ms. Elam said.

In recent
years, more than two dozen companies that run for-profit colleges have
been investigated or sued by state prosecutors. To handle the load, 37
state attorneys general have teamed up to form a working group.
Together, the 152 schools under investigation received about $8.1
billion in federal student loan and grant payments last fiscal year,
according to a detailed analysis by Mr. Miller for The New York Times,
using data provided by the Education Department.

Students were promised
they would be primed for careers as police officers, sheriffs,
corrections officers and FBI agents, but only 3.8 percent of graduates
were actually employed as sworn law enforcement officers or correctional
officers, the lawsuit states. The two most common jobs for graduates of
the criminal justice program were as security guards or in retailing,
positions that typically require only a high school or equivalency
diploma. Alta schools received more than $104 million in federal aid in
the last school year.

Alta filed papers in court denying the allegations. The company did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

Other schools under investigation complain they are the target of a witch hunt.

Chris
Hardman, senior vice president for communications at Education
Management, said that the company was cooperating with prosecutors but
that many of the investigations related to past recruiting practices.

“We
are dedicated to providing the opportunity for an education that, were
it not for schools like ours, many of our students might never achieve,”
Mr. Hardman said.

Other schools, including Lincoln Technical
Institute and Kaplan Career Institute in Massachusetts, have negotiated
settlements with state prosecutors.

Kaplan, which no longer runs
any schools in Massachusetts, paid nearly $1.4 million, mostly used to
pay down student loans, after being accused of misleading students with
false information about its program and job placement and using
“harassing sales tactics.”

The parent company, Kaplan Higher Education settled another suit
this year with the Justice Department, for $1.3 million, after being
accused of employing unqualified instructors to teach its medical
assistant courses in Texas.

Neither Kaplan nor Lincoln admitted
any wrongdoing.Kaplan’s schools, including its online California law
school, where only one in five students graduates, received $776.3
million worth of federal student loans and grants last year. Because it
lacks bar association accreditation, most graduates outside California
are not allowed to take a bar exam.

“These schools exist on the
back of U.S. taxpayers,” Maura Healey, the Massachusetts attorney
general, said. “It’s time to turn off the spigot of federal student loan
that are flowing into these for-profit colleges.”

“They
absolutely have the authority today” to cut off funds, Ms. Healey said,
arguing that the federal government could rely on findings by the state
attorneys general, among other evidence of abuse.

So far more
than 3,000 former Corinthian students have successfully petitioned the
Education Department to erase their college loan debt because their
school closed. Thousands more from Corinthian have asked for relief.

Education
officials met with advocates at the White House last month, to discuss
whether the agency could act more quickly to cut off access to federal
funds when there were warning signs of bad behavior, according to a
participant.

Although
for-profit schools are prohibited from receiving more than 90 percent
of their revenue from the federal government, military benefits such as
the Pentagon’s tuition-assistance program and the G.I. Bill are not
counted toward that sum, a loophole that has infuriated critics.

David
Halperin, a Washington lawyer who tracks investigations against
for-profits, has taken federal officials to task for not moving more
aggressively against schools with long records of complaints.

“The
Department of Education has declared Corinthian Colleges a disaster
area in need of a big taxpayer bailout, yet the department continues to
send billions of dollars to other for-profit colleges that are deceiving
and abusing students in the same ways Corinthian did,” he said.

Warning Signs

A
formal investigation is only one of the serious warning signs that a
college may be engaging in abusive practices or financial shenanigans,
prosecutors, officials and advocates say.

There are 98 for-profit
schools on the Education Department’s financial responsibility watch
list, which Mr. Mitchell, the under secretary, has described as a
“caution light.” They received roughly $600 million in the last year.

And
35 for-profit schools have been subjected to the department’s most
stringent financial sanctions, which limit access to federal money in
advance. Inclusion on this list can be another signal that there are
regulatory problems, sometimes serious, relating to accreditation,
financial statements and audits, liabilities or denial of
certifications. Last year, these schools received more than $15 million.

Education
advocates have also accused the Education Department of not more
aggressively policing for-profit schools that convert to nonprofits as a
way of sidestepping federal regulations. A report released last week by The Century Foundation
concluded: “The owners of some for-profit institutions have sought to
switch their schools to nonprofit status, freeing them from the
regulatory burdens of for-profit colleges, while continuing to reap the
personal financial benefits of for-profit ownership.”

Mr.
Mitchell said that a new regulation that went into effect this summer
would add a powerful weapon to the agency’s arsenal of sanctions. Known
as the gainful employment rule, it measures whether graduates of
for-profit vocational programs as well as nondegree programs at
community colleges earn enough to pay off student loans.

The
Obama administration, which sent officials on the road last month to
promote his plan for free community college, has estimated that 99
percent of the 1,400 programs likely to fail under the new rules are run
by for-profit schools. The industry has fiercely fought this new
regulation; Democrats and Republicans in Congress have introduced
legislation to roll it back.

Mr. Mitchell also criticized state accreditation agencies for not more aggressively monitoring substandard institutions.

“The
fact that Corinthian was accredited through the day of its bankruptcy,”
Mr. Mitchell said, “shows that there’s a lot of work to do through
quality assurance.”

TUCSON
— The federal checkpoints on highways near the Mexican border, with
trained dogs and expensive scanning equipment, are supposed to stop
drugs and immigrants without legal status from heading north. But newly
released complaints against United States Customs and Border Protection paint
a disquieting portrait of the interactions between agents and many of
those they stopped and searched.Last year, in southeastern Arizona, a
military veteran said his children shuddered with fear in the back seat
as agents repeatedly asked him if the children were really his. A woman
at a checkpoint between Phoenix and Tucson said an agent threatened to
use a stun gun
on her brother in 2012 after he asked why their vehicle was being
searched. And at a California checkpoint in 2013, a man said an agent
approached him, hand on his holstered weapon, and demanded: “How would
you like to have a gun pointed at your face?”

The accounts were
culled from nearly 6,000 pages of complaints, arrest statistics and
other records released in recent months to the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona
by Customs and Border Protection’s overseer, the Department of Homeland
Security, after the A.C.L.U. sued the department for access.
Collectively, the documents, detailing encounters between motorists and
border agents from January 2011 to August 2014, portray an agency whose
fractured oversight system has enabled at least some agents working
along the southern border to stretch the limits of law and professional
courtesy while rarely facing meaningful consequences.

Among the
142 complaints obtained by the A.C.L.U., only one seems to have resulted
in disciplinary action: An agent received a one-day suspension for
unjustifiably stopping a vehicle, apparently driven by the son of a
retired Border Patrol agent.

James Lyall, an A.C.L.U. lawyer
dedicated to the border, said the records not only confirmed the types
of stories his office regularly hears from border residents, but also
suggested that Customs and Border Protection has underreported the
number of civil rights complaints it has received. For example, in
reports to Congress for the 2012 fiscal year, oversight agencies listed
three complaints accusing agents of violating the Fourth Amendment,
which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, according to an
A.C.L.U. report. At the same time, the records the A.C.L.U. received
include 81 such accusations filed during the same period against agents
assigned to the Border Patrol’s Tucson and Yuma sectors, or only two of
its 20 regional divisions along the southern and northern borders.

“C.B.P.’s
own records paint a disturbing picture of lawlessness and impunity, in
which the agency continually operates without any regard for accepted
best practices, and agents commit widespread abuses knowing they won’t
be held accountable,” Mr. Lyall said.

Agency officials declined to respond to requests for comment on the complaints, directing reporters to remarks from Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske
that highlight his effort to make openness and accountability top
priorities when he took over the agency in March 2014. One agency
official held up Friday’s arraignment of a Border Patrol agent, Lonnie
Swartz, on the cross-border killing of a 16-year-old boy, José Antonio Elena Rodriguez, as an example that no one is above the law.

But
civil rights lawyers, along with members of Congress from border towns
in Texas and Arizona, have long argued that Customs and Border
Protection works according to its own rules, resisting calls for greater
transparency and accountability.

As evidence, they note that
since Jan. 1, 2010, 33 people have died in encounters with border and
customs agents but that so far, Agent Swartz has been the only one to
face federal criminal charges. (He pleaded not guilty to second-degree
murder in Federal District Court here on Friday.)

Many of the
families of those who were killed have also complained that the agency
has fought hard to keep the names of agents implicated in the killings
under seal; José Antonio’s family had to sue to learn Agent Swartz’s identity.

The
agency has also been slow to investigate when shots are fired but no
injuries are confirmed, and failed to track the number of stops at
checkpoints or by roving patrols unless the stops result in arrests. A 2013 report
by the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum said such “no harm, no
foul” procedures can lead to a “tacit approval of bad practices.”

Mr. Kerlikowske, in response, has convened panels and pushed for changes in the way the agency does business.

In particular, he has championed the recommendations
released in June by the Integrity Advisory Panel, of which Commissioner
William J. Bratton of New York is vice chairman. Its recommendations
for the agency ranged from basic — “emphasize that its overarching
responsibility is to preserve human life” — to practical, such as
enforcing requirements that all uniformed personnel wear visible name
tags at all times and improving Spanish-language abilities at its call
centers, where many of the abuse complaints are logged.

“I am
taking steps to make transparency and accountability hallmarks of my
tenure at C.B.P.,” Mr. Kerlikowske said in April during a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “The public’s trust in us depends on it.”

This
month he announced the latest of several policy updates, calling for
proper safekeeping of the personal effects of migrants apprehended while
illegally crossing the border, adequate standards of hygiene and
temperature in holding cells, and specific language on gender identity,
which did not exist.

On Tuesday, the agency reported that
use-of-force incidents dropped by 26 percent over the past fiscal year —
to 768 in the 2015 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, from 1,037 in the
2014 fiscal year. There were 28 incidents involving firearms in the
2015 fiscal year, one fewer than in the previous fiscal year.

In a statement, Commissioner Kerlikowske said that he was “encouraged by the progress,” but that “more can be done.”

Civil rights advocates and elected officials say the agency still has a long way to go.

The
civil rights complaints filed by motorists at checkpoints and roving
patrols in Arizona and southeastern California that are part of the
A.C.L.U. records — as well as hundreds of other cases found in complaint
records obtained independently by The New York Times — are full of
accusations of lengthy detentions and damaged property, such as ripped
carpets and seats as agents presumably searched for drugs.

Often,
drivers claimed that the agents’ aggressive reactions were prompted by a
simple question: Why had their vehicle been picked for an inspection?

Representative
Raúl M. Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, whose district includes border
communities from Nogales to Yuma, said his office has received numerous
such complaints from constituents, who speak of “being frustrated” and
“losing confidence” over the Border Patrol’s “justifications and
judgment.”

“Citizens, permanent legal residents, people who have
lived in the borderlands for generations — that’s who’s making these
complaints,” said Mr. Grijalva, who added that he also had his car
searched this year at a checkpoint south of Tucson. “People make the
complaints, but their complaints go nowhere. There’s no acknowledgment,
absolutely no response.”

Many of the complaints that he and the
A.C.L.U. have received make allegations of ethnic profiling. One, by a
lawyer for the City of Nogales, says, “How many non-Hispanic-looking
persons get subjected to non-immigration questions? How many
declarations of U.S. citizenship by non-Hispanic-looking persons are
subject to further questioning? The tired excuse of ‘the dog alerted’
has worn incredibly thin as a reason to search Hispanics.”

Agents
rely heavily on drug-sniffing dogs to inspect the thousands of cars
that go through the Border Patrol’s busiest checkpoints, tollbooth-like
way stations near the border. But the agency does not seem to keep track
of when dogs alert, how often they alert and how often their alerts are
wrong. It records an alert only when it results in an arrest.

Jane
Bambauer, an associate professor of law at the University of Arizona,
said this type of detailed record-keeping was “critical to
accountability” because it would allow the agency to assess if a program
is working or not.

“If they’re only reporting when their hunches
turn out to be correct, we can’t say if their hunches have been
reliable,” said Ms. Bambauer, who joined the A.C.L.U. in its public
records request, which the Homeland Security Department ignored until it
was sued. “What you end up with is a pretty aggressive agency that
doesn’t know how to measure the effectiveness of all the power that it
wields.”

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13) Officials in Texas Grapple With Police Decision to Use Taser on City Council Member

Officials
in a small Texas town are questioning a decision by the police to use a
Taser on a member of the City Council before charging him with
resisting arrest.

The City Council in Prairie View, Tex., will
hold a special session on Thursday, asking for an update from the police
about why Jonathan L. Miller, a 26-year-old councilman, was Tasered
last Thursday after he approached officers who had detained three of Mr.
Miller’s friends outside his home.

In a police video of the
encounter, a female officer can be heard saying to Mr. Miller as he
approached, “There’s been drug activity — little girls and little guys
in the car doing whatever.”

In the video, Mr. Miller tries to
explain to the officer that he and his friends were practicing a march,
and that they were in town to celebrate Prairie View A&M University,
their alma mater. The female officer, who is black, says that the
situation is fine and asks Mr. Miller to back away.

One of Mr. Miller’s friends tells the officer that he is a City Council member. “I know who he is,” the female officer responds.

In
a confrontation that intensifies over about three minutes, Mr. Miller
is told to back away from the officers repeatedly but refuses.

“You’re
always starting problems, so go back over there,” another officer tells
him. When Mr. Miller refuses to move, that officer is at first told by
the female officer not to use the Taser.

“He’s going to have to
tase you,” the female officer says, though Mr. Miller was not combative.
“You’re not doing like you’re supposed to do.”

“I told you to back off,” the male officer says. “You did not listen.”

“I live here,” Mr. Miller repeatedly says. “What’s the issue? What did I do?”

Calls
to Mr. Miller and Prairie View’s mayor, Frank D. Jackson, were not
returned and messages were not immediately answered on Tuesday. In a video posted
shortly after his release from custody, Mr. Miller said that he was
charged with interfering with public duties and for resisting arrest.
Mr. Miller was the only person taken into custody during the encounter,
the police said Tuesday.

Tasers are frequently used by police
officers to disarm their targets, but activists worry about the weapon’s
prevalence. Taser International, the manufacturer of the electrical
weapons, said in May that more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies had purchased the devices, which are used about 900 times a day.

On
Monday, Larry Johnson, the chief of Prairie View Police, said that the
video of the episode had been turned over to the Waller County district
attorney, and that the Taser had been used according to policy, The
Associated Press reported.

Prairie
View, a small college town where more than 80 percent of residents are
black, has been under heightened scrutiny since this summer, when Sandra
Bland, a black woman, was found dead in her jail cell
days after she was arrested during a traffic stop in the town.
Dashboard camera video taken from that episode showed the white state
trooper who arrested her threatening her with a Taser.

“I
will light you up,” the trooper, Brian T. Encinia, told Ms. Bland, who
was later taken into custody after being pushed to the ground.

Germany’s
transportation minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said that the mandatory
recall would begin in 2016 and would be overseen by the regulator, the Federal Motor Transport Authority, known by its German initials K.B.A.

“The
K.B.A. believes that the software used in the diesel engines
constitutes an illegal defeat device,” Mr. Dobrindt said. “The authority
has demanded that Volkswagen remove the software and take all steps
necessary to ensure that the emissions regulations are met.”The
crackdown by the German government deals a blow to the company in one of
its most important markets.

Volkswagen said that it had received
a response from the transport authority early on Thursday, but that it
needed time to review it before commenting on it.

The German
automaker has been under increasing pressure since admitting last month
to American environmental authorities that it had installed a line of code in software in its diesel engines intended to manipulate the results of emissions testing.

The
transport authority last week demanded that Volkswagen submit a
proposal to remedy the problem. Although the company had offered fixes,
the regulator instead ordered the recall.

In its proposal,
Volkswagen had offered to update software on vehicles with 1.2- and
2-liter diesel engines starting next year to override the code that
American environmental authorities discovered limited the amount of
noxious gasses emitted during lab testing, but not during normal
driving.

Mr. Dobrindt said the regulator believed the software
was also active in cars in Germany and expected the company to present a
fix for the 2-liter motors, with the solutions for the 1.2- and
1.6-liter engines to be presented by the end of November.

The
1.6-liter models will most likely require additional hardware to remedy
the problem that would not be ready until September of next year, Mr.
Dobrindt said.

This week, Volkswagen said that it would develop electric vehicles,
an offering the company has been slow to adopt, despite a pledge by the
German government to get one million electric cars on the road by 2020.

Barbara
Hendricks, the German minister for the environment, said the government
should consider scrapping a tax break for diesel engines, shifting it
instead to electric vehicles to encourage more environmentally friendly
technology.

Volkswagen’s newly appointed chief executive, Matthias Müller,
is scheduled to meet with the company’s top executives on Thursday. It
will be Mr. Müller’s first such meeting since taking over from his
predecessor, Martin Winterkorn, who stepped down last month, taking responsibility for the scandal.

On Oct. 12, Volkswagen said it would recall 1,950 diesel vehicles in China.
But while China is a big automotive market for the company, it has sold
very few diesels there. And there was no public indication that Beijing
had ordered the recall.

WASHINGTON — The 60 million people on Social Security
will not receive any cost-of-living increase in their benefits in 2016,
the government said on Thursday, but because of a quirk in federal law,
nearly one-third of them could see big increases in their Medicare premiums unless Congress intervenes.

The
Obama administration is hoping Congress will moderate or stop the
premium increases, which could raise the cost for some Medicare
beneficiaries by about 50 percent — the largest increase, by far, in the
history of Medicare.

Social Security has provided automatic
cost-of-living adjustments in every year since 1975 with two exceptions,
2010 and 2011. But inflation was extremely low in 2015, triggering
another benefit freeze, Social Security officials said. Gasoline prices,
in particular, have declined sharply, holding down overall prices in
the economy.

The purpose of the automatic increases is to
preserve the purchasing power of Social Security benefits.Jason Furman,
the chairman of President Obama’s
Council of Economic Advisers, said recently that the lack of a
cost-of-living adjustment resulted from a positive economic development:
“The sharp decline in energy prices that is putting more money in
families’ pockets” and contributing to the economic recovery.

Medicare
still needs additional money to help pay for Part B of the program,
which covers doctors’ services, outpatient hospital care and some
prescription drugs.

About 70 percent of Medicare beneficiaries
will be protected against higher premiums in 2016. But Medicare
actuaries predicted in July that the standard premium for other
beneficiaries would rise next year to $159 a month. The premium for most
beneficiaries is now just under $105 a month, the same as in 2013 and
2014.

In the absence of legislative action, the White House faces
a choice between two politically perilous options. It could authorize a
big increase in Medicare premiums for more than 15 million
beneficiaries. Or it could authorize the secretary of health and human
services, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, to take money from Medicare’s
“contingency reserve,” which serves as a cushion in case actual spending
is higher than projected. The contingency fund is already lower than
the level recommended by Medicare actuaries.